ServDes2020

Figure 1: Kate Storey (2021) Kate’s ServDes2020 poster, pdf.

The international ServDes conference was postponed in 2020 due to Covid-19 and hosted a year later by the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) online. The conference’s theme focused on the tensions, plurality and paradox of design context and the challenges this can present to designers and their research. I shared my research in the student forum and created a poster and short talk to share my experience researching at Montsalvat.

Both were titled Sensory Design: Making sense of tensions, plurality and paradox in a culturally contested heritage site. They explored some of the interventions I had developed to encourage more participatory approaches to designing a self-guided visitor experience with the community. The talk addressed some of the challenges I experienced whilst working in a culturally contested setting and the contribution that sensory design made to encouraging greater empathy, openness and trust at a difficult time.

Figure 2: ServDes2020 (2021) Kate’s poster and presentation at SevDes2020, screenshot of ServDes2020 website, accessed 27 September 2022. https://servdes2020.org/events/94-sensory-design-making-sense-of-tensions-plurality-and-paradox-in-a-culturally-contested-heritage-site